Tips For Planting Tomatoes

Choosing the right seeds and the correct planter is essential to ensuring your tomatoes will thrive in your garden. In addition to selecting the best seed varieties, make sure you consider watering and fertilizing your plants. Besides, you’ll also want to mulch and prune them to help maintain their healthy condition.

Watering evenly

Watering tomato plants evenly is one of the keys to growing great tomatoes. Watering your plants properly can help to prevent a number of disorders. Incorrectly watering your tomato plants may cause stunted growth, wilted leaves, and yellowed fruit. It can also promote the development of diseases.

The amount of water a plant needs to grow is dependent on the size of the tomato, the state of the fruit, and the temperature. Watering too much will flush important nutrients out of the soil and can also lead to brown, rotting roots. However, too little water can be just as harmful, and may cause stunted growth and yellowing leaves.

The trick is to find the right balance between watering and letting the soil dry out. A good rule of thumb is to water your tomato plants about once a week. You can measure how much you’re watering by using a moisture meter.

Tomatoes like evenly moist soil, so try to water them deeply. This is a good idea for your plant’s root system.

Fertilizing

If you’re looking to grow tomatoes, you will want to give them plenty of water and nutrients. In addition to that, fertilizing tomato plants can help them produce a lot more fruit. While you may be tempted to use chemical fertilizers, you should consider using natural organic fertilizers instead.

Tomatoes require a steady supply of potassium, nitrogen and phosphorus. You can improve the health of your soil by adding compost. Compost helps to improve the structure and nutrient content of your soil. It can be mixed into the soil or added directly into a garden bed.

If you don’t have time to dig up organic matter for your soil, you can add it to the seed-starting mix when you plant. Some gardeners also use animal manures. Other gardeners recommend mixing in some kitchen scraps.

When you fertilize tomato plants, you want to do so at key stages in the plant’s life cycle. You can apply organic nitrogen fertilizer to your plants early spring and again in late summer.

Mulching

Tomato plants need mulch to help keep moisture in the soil and to keep weeds at bay. Mulching also helps cool the soil around the roots and protects the tomato plant’s stems from the summer heat. Several different types of mulch can be used to protect tomato plants.

The University of Missouri Extension recommends using a combination of wood chips and grass clippings. These materials can be mixed with organic mulch, such as compost, to enhance the quality of the soil. They may be placed in a two-to-five inch layer around the base of the plant.

Plastic mulch is also an option, but be careful. This type of mulch can damage your plant if it melts frequently in warm weather.

Shredded newspaper is a good mulch for tomatoes. It not only holds moisture but it also keeps weeds away for longer periods of time.

Pine needles are another great option for mulching tomato plants. The needles are packed with valuable nutrients that will enrich the soil.

Pruning

Pruning tomato plants is a necessary part of growing tomatoes. It helps to prevent fungal infections and early blight, two common problems. The process of pruning also lets you open up the leaves for greater air circulation. This helps to speed up ripening.

To prune a tomato plant, you need to remove older, lower leaves from the main stem. These leaves can become infected with bacteria and fungi when they are wet.

In order to avoid this, you should clean your tools before and after each pruning session. You can use a hand sanitizer or bleach solution. Rinse your hands, and sanitize your tools with a 10 percent bleach solution.

You can prune a tomato plant by pinching or removing the upper leaves, or by cutting down the growing tip of the main stem. When the top of the tomato is cut, it opens up more sunlight and air circulation to the plant.

Some tomato varieties have suckers, or side shoots, that grow from the bottom of the main stem. When they become a few inches long, they should be cut off.